US Army to invade World of Warcraft with AI

Arnie might have been more recognisable, but we'd prefer to stare at Summer Glau's version of the Terminator instead.

The US Army has announced that it is to start testing a new type of artificial intelligence in public through the servers for Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

You heard us; SkyNet is coming to Azeroth!

The new AI has been designed by Dr. John Parmentola for the US military and is intended to be used to control holographic soldiers for use in training exercise and battle simulation. As an early test though the Army is to upload the AI to World of Warraft and see if it can successfully pass itself off as a human player.

"We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they’re good enough to convince humans that they’re actually human, that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang," said Dr. John in a statement to the press.

"I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they’re responding."

According to Gizmodo this is just one of several crazy-sounding projects that the Army is currently working on. Other projects include researching technology to erase memories that cause trauma, creating nanites that can rebuild limbs and finding ways that soldiers can play MMOs all day without getting fired.

Think you've spotted an AI wandering across Azeroth? Let us know what he looked like in the forums.

I think he really just couldn't be bothered levelling to 70 himself before Wrath of the Lich King comes out. And then there's all those achievements :-P
would love to see some more info on this sort of thing

I think its a stupid idea. One its not meant to interact with video game characters controled by humans using a keyboard and mouse, for people act retarded in wow like when everyone stands around naked while dancing. Honestly you have humans in an unnatural environment testing whether it appears human or not... damn my country's military is retarded. I think its going to be a Army recruitment bot saying things like "Gee you know whats better then playing wow playing wow for the US army". Stupid idiots.

It strikes me as a slight cheat to the Turin test. In wow your not expecting a bot to act remotely human so your not looking for it if your taking part in a Turin test your likely to be on guard and attempting to trip it up.

Originally Posted by steveo_mcgIt strikes me as a slight cheat to the Turing test. In wow your not expecting the actual players to act remotely human so your not looking for it if your taking part in a Turing test your likely to be on guard and attempting to trip it up.

The reason they most likely chose WoW is due to the large diverse player base. Sure COD4 is a military style game, but a bot pulling headshots in there is not the purpose of the test. An AI bot could do little in the way of chatter and fit in. It would seem that they want to prove that this AI system can be placed anywhere and be mistaken as a human. Its a lofty goal. Especially when considering the type of chat and interaction that occurs in an MMO.

they also choose wow because it is readily adapted for bot play and for awhile had a 3rd party bot program. I would think it must have some way of increasing it's vocabulary or else it would have a problem with wow. It would be interesting to see how it played out and say if it could successfully heal an instance or otherwise play in a team

i would be really surprised if blizzard didn't agree/ provide them support. The fact that they announced it most likely means they have been in discussion with blizzard. It already has good AI support so I think it was the easiest for the army to jack into. Really this bot wouldn't work well without support from blizzard not to mention it would be very hard for it to jack into the game

I remember a number of AI programs that would expand their vocabulary and speech patterns based on how people talked to them. Then the silly fools put the programs on the internet. Guess what the average level of discourse was?

The sad thing is that copious use of four-letter words is exactly what your average internet denizen sounds like, perhaps doubly so on an MMO where the average player is a fourteen year old trapped in a grown man's body (frequently with an age difference's worth of BO to boot). Hell, anyone could make a bot that could pass for human in most online games; put up a rotation of a couple dozen basic Mad Libs, fill them in with random curse words and misspell half the sentence. It'd fit right in on a typical CS pub.